Recruiting Intelligence

A few weeks ago, we wrote about bringing your admitted leads into focus, sharing in-the-moment tactics for keeping this fall's cohort from wavering.

This is the after-action version. Fall matriculation has come and gone. The instinct is to exhale and move on to the next cycle. Don't.

The month after enrollment locks is exactly when you have the clearest view of where commitments went soft. Address issues now for your team’s best shot at fixing the process before you're back in the thick of recruiting next year’s cohort. Future you will thank you.

Our Buttoning Up Counsel

We've mapped specific checkpoints along the prospective student journey where a "yes" either grows stronger or goes silent. Your basic map at your institution looks something like this, right?

Note though, the student journey is not a Candy Cane game path (above). As we've presented at a range of conferences and in our publications, the student journey is much more of a neural network concept as described in this blog post- where you will find access to really helpful slides from an AIRC conference presentation about student journey perspective. (Very much worth the click.)

Your early fall task: Convene your full team (be sure to include your data analyst and those with frequent CRM access) and discuss each recruitment/enrollment stage. What worked well? Where were hiccups? Pain points should be easy to identify, though with the full team in the room, there may be a few surprises; all the better. Read on for guidance on a quick lessons-learned evaluation at each stage:

Your chief business officer is navigating rising personnel costs, deferred maintenance, technology investments, enrollment pressure, and limited institutional patience. International enrollment can be part of the answer. Yet many business officers still do not see it that way.

That disconnect was hard to miss at the NACUBO Annual Meeting. Unlike the international student-focused conferences your Intead team typically frequents, introductions at NACUBO often began with budgets, employee counts, bargaining units, and capital obligations. Students entered the conversation later. That observation is not a criticism. It is a reminder that business officers experience the institution through a different set of pressures -- and international leaders gain influence when they understand those pressures and that lens.

Your job: Get your CBO to see international as a revenue center (not a cost center).

Last week, we explained that international enrollment has always been a finance strategy. NACUBO 2026 reinforced the point. But the international office has more to offer the business office than a budget request. You can bring a disciplined revenue opportunity, a diversification strategy, and a clearer view of global market risk.

The finance conversation is already happening

Business officers are not waiting for international leaders to enter the room. They are already evaluating new programs, AI investments, auxiliary revenue, cost reductions, partnerships, and the return on nearly every institutional commitment. International enrollment belongs in the room where these conversations are happening.

Often, chief business officers lack information about global recruitment. But here’s the thing: when the international office brings CBOs that critical information, leaders often present the information in a form that does not answer the questions finance leaders are asking.

Market potential, brand visibility, student interest, and competitor activity matter. So do investment horizon, net tuition, program capacity, support costs, downside risk, and clarity on the points at which leadership can adjust course.

That distinction shaped the NACUBO session Intead presented with three institutional leaders: Dr. Jia-Yi Cheng-Levine, Dean of International Affairs and Global Engagement at College of the Canyons; Dr. Tamara T. Cunningham, Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Initiatives and Arts & Campus Activation at University of California, San Diego; and Dr. Balaji Krishnan, Vice Provost for International Affairs and Professor of Marketing at the University of Memphis. Our session, “International Enrollment Growth Options: Three Publics Share Business Perspectives,” examined how three very different public institutions evaluate international student-focused investments.

The range of institutions mattered. A community college, a major research university, and an urban public university do not share the same market position, operating model, or organizational culture. Yet each institution faces the same core questions: Where can internationalization create value that aligns with institutional priorities? How will global investments create financial resilience?

Read on…

Our regular readers know our devotion to cross-cultural intersections. Today we focus your attention on the financial value of global.

At the NACUBO 2026 Annual Meeting, I spent several days listening to chief business officers talk about the problems consuming higher education: rising personnel costs, deferred maintenance, enrollment pressure, AI investments, student success vs. access, the loss of institutional knowledge as long-serving leaders retire, oh, and changing Federal policies and guidelines.

Important to note: just 13% of CBOs say their institution understands per-student program and activity costs very well as reported in Inside Higher Ed from their annual survey of CBOs. There’s an opportunity for you right there.

You know what did not come up at the conference? International enrollment.

Nearly every concern being discussed at NACUBO pointed toward the need for new, sustainable revenue streams. While international enrollment cannot solve every financial challenge facing a college or university, it can become a meaningful part of the solution. And given today’s pressures, international is just as reliable as any other options for revenue-sustainability being evaluated by your leadership.

The larger point is easy to miss amid headlines about visa delays, geopolitics, and fluctuating student demand: international enrollment drives revenue. And that revenue opportunity is not well understood by your business officers. In fact, your CBO needs to hear from you, and this is important: they don’t know that they need to hear from you.

Read on...

Chaos is costly. Clarity is half off.

This truth brought to you by The Economist’s latest flash sale. Sometimes an ad sums up a vibe so neatly. Maybe the ad just caught us at the right moment. (Um, thanks Meta?)

Whether it was the morning coffee or the marketing kitsch, The Economist's attempt to get us to subscribe (we already do) served as a good reminder of the cost of chaos.

Pick your tumult: visa whack-a-mole, Duration of Status policy threats, internal budget cuts, NSF decimation, demographic cliff, you name it. The disruptions of the past 18+ months have cost our industry its equilibrium, individuals their sanity, and certainly some enrollment.

The numbers speak loudly: 97,000 fewer student US visas were awarded last summer, driven largely by a near-monthlong freeze on visa interviews. (Canada, UK, and Australia have similar downbeats). Now, DHS may adjust the “Duration of Status” for F-1 and J-1 visa holders, replacing it with a fixed admission period of up to four years and dimming the luster on some students’ dreams of a US degree. And, if history tells us anything, it won’t be the last disruption our international student hopefuls and enrollment leaders will endure.

Despite the continued chaos, we have actual work to do. Handwringing be damned! Students still want to enroll at your institution. Time to busy your team securing the fall cohort by shoring up those leads. This is ground you know well.

Read on for insights from our team, including our latest addition to Intead, Lindsey Lopez, on what to prioritize now to bring your 2026/27 leads into focus and produce your target yield.

Read on…

How is your LinkedIn feed treating you lately? The algorithm has so finely curated mine at this point that I have a seemingly endless stream of academic news from a wide variety of “mostly” insightful posts. All good food for thought.

Mostly, I scroll and learn. Other times, I marvel at the patterns of folks trying (perhaps too hard) to get noticed. Sometimes I’m frustrated by the all-too-common story arc: take something well known and accepted as truth and call it into question. These posts often prompt reader engagement but act as just a surface-level contrarian view with little insight to truly add to the conversation. And that description is likely generous.

There are many of us in the field seeking insights to help us navigate these troubled times. Academia, the headlines seem to tell us, is under tremendous strain. True enough, and yet, a lot of those headlines end up being a whole lot of noise.

History shows us that troubled times come and go. Some institutions will fail to ride out the storm. Those that do make it to the other side sometimes prevail by what seems to be dumb luck. Others plan and adapt, giving their institution the best shot at future success. With so much noise in the system and so many distractions, planning and adapting require focus – a focus that helps you see the important signals separate from the noise. No easy task.

Two recent trips to DC for conferences (AIEA and WIEC) offered the desirable opportunity to meet with our community, maintain connections, share experiences, and noodle about what really is noise and what the truly important signals are. Really helpful, as so many in our field seem to spend a lot of time wringing their hands and falling into the rut of complaining. It’s easy to do when times are legitimately tough.

But that isn’t leadership.

And that is not planning and adapting.

Below we offer two valuable focus areas where we believe academic leaders can move the needle despite the turbulence AND two helpful resources in times like these.

Read on…

Nothing forces the drive for clarity like experiencing chaos.  

Good news in years like these, we suppose. The policy swings and shifts in student demand have tested every institution’s agility and fortitude. But for leaders paying attention, the volatility is forcing a refining of strategy and development of a sharper view of what truly drives enrollment growth. 

Churn happens in every setting. Promotions, departures, budget realignment, team and department consolidation.

Disruptive, yes, but hardly unprecedented – a common cycle typically prompted by fiscal changes and then the disruptions ripple out from there. 

And yet, change rarely feels routine. Especially at the scale we are experiencing right now.

Still, your programs need promotion, your Deans have their own priorities, and everyone knows that your important leadership chair is about to turn over (you know the one, right?).

What is an enrollment team to do? Do you launch a new marketing campaign now, or wait? What if today’s A, B, and C priorities become tomorrow’s D, E, and F because the new leader coming in 4 or 5 months will have their own ideas.

And what happens in the meantime as you try to sort it all out? Stasis.  

So often, teams sit on their hard-won budgets, waiting for stability and clarity. An approach, for sure, but not a good one. Doing nothing isn’t leadership (too blunt?) – and doing nothing will do nothing to advance your yield or deliver your next class.

We all know there are legitimate excuses for not hitting your numbers. Yet we see this stasis mode all the time. And yet...

What your enrollment team needs in times of ambiguity: smart bets and clarity. 

The never-ending quest for content that helps you move the needle. This year that means a serious focus on ideas and tools your enrollment team can use to adapt to the opportunities out there and reach enrollment goals. The pressure our clients and so many others are under right now feels daunting, to say the least. Our goal: help keep them (and you) focused on effective recruitment and retention.  

In troubled times, we do not sit on our hands. There are always actions we can take despite the challenges that throw us off our original game plan. 

During a recent staff meeting, it occurred to us: over the past 15 years the Intead team has given more than 100 conference presentations. That’s a lot of higher edu conferences! And if there’s one theme that runs through them all, it’s change. 

(We like to think another theme running through them all is innovative use of data leading to valuable enrollment insights, but those of you who have been in the sessions can be the judge of that).

Five years ago, Covid “changed everything.” Mask mandates and travel restrictions arrived so suddenly, they still feel within uncomfortable reach. While those disruptions have mostly passed –  some effects stuck. Think: hybrid work, remote classes.  

And yet, at a NAFSA session on enrollment marketing earlier this year, when a fellow attendee remarked with dismay, “My school is doing all the same things we did before Covid. But everything has changed…” We couldn’t help but wonder, has it? 

Unlike most of his peers, my son (it’s Carrie talking here) applied to just two higher ed institutions. He got into both. Accepted both. Put down a deposit on both. Will attend just one. And so, he’s part of the admissions problem.  

Our colleague (and contributor to today’s post) Jon Boeckenstedt, retiring vice provost of enrollment management at Oregon State University, explains it like this: A lot of people think yield is like planting saplings in greenhouses, where your success is highly dependent on things you control, like spacing, soil quality, temperature, water, etc. In fact, yield is more like scattering seeds, where you are hopeful, and you have some ideas of success based on prior years, but in reality, you're at the mercy of factors you have zero control over.  

As an example: Last year, UCLA received 146,276 applications. About 13,114 students or 9% were admitted. For comparison, just 4 years earlier, in 2020, the university had an acceptance rate of 18%. And a decade+ ago in 2010, it was 23%. Go back further to 2000, it was 29%. And wait for it, in 1990, it was just above 40%. A lot has changed in a 30+ years. 

Read on…